


Starlight on a Christmas Night

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:23:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Christmas Eve in the Stormcage containment facility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starlight on a Christmas Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



She sits at her window, watching the icicles melt. The steady drip-drip of water falling has kept her awake through the day; somewhere in a tidy little office, a guard is pressing the button that defrosts the exterior of Stormcage. It wouldn’t do to have a prisoner find a way to whisk one through a window and use it as a weapon (she smirks a little, because that precaution is entirely her fault).

A thin sheet of condensation is forming on the window, and she pulls off one of her gloves and idly traces patterns against the glass. Egyptian heiroglyphs, Monothetian runes, the whirls and loops and lines of ancient High Gallifreyan, and half a dozen other lost languages languidly spell out, “Happy Christmas”.

A radio buzzes behind her. “No, sir, she’s just doodling on the window. I think she’s bored, sir. Yes, sir, I know that’s when she’s the most dangerous. I’ll keep an eye on her, sir.”

She smiles and turns to face him, dipping a hand down to insure that her instruments are properly in place. This guard is young, and nearly new, and he doesn’t quite understand what she is yet. The gun is cool against her thigh, and she is careful to keep it out of his line of sight as she sashays to the bars.

“Drew the short straw, did you? You must have, if you’re patrolling the corridors and missing the holiday celebrations.” The guard eyes her warily. “Do tell me some hot young thing at least offered to save you some eggnog.”

“I volunteered,” the guard grunts, nervously meeting her eyes. “Last Christmas was my first with my wife, so I asked to be off duty completely. It was only fair.”

She lifts her eyebrow, carefully calculating the effect her expression must have on him. “I don’t recall you from last year. In fact I thought you were quite new.”

“No, ma’am.”

“What’s your name, soldier?” she asks, leaning so that her face presses through the bars. She leers at him in her most unsettling fashion.

“Parkei Rulfo, Dr Song,” he says, clearly nervous now. He leans back, obviously familiar with her penchant for hallucinogenic lipstick.

“Ah. Well, Parkei, I’m really very sorry, but--” she pulls the trigger in her hand, shooting a needle laden with potent knock-out drugs into his upper thigh “--it’s Christmas tomorrow and I’m hosting this year. You should have had the eggnog.”

He slumps to the ground outside her cell, and with a sigh, she disables the locks and the alarms and slips into the corridor to relocate him. When she returns, the familiar blue box is parked outside her cell and he is leaning against it.

“You’re here early,” she says, and her smile is genuine and warm this time.

“You told me to bring the decorations,” the Doctor points out, standing straight and adjusting his bowtie with a flourish. “I promise that the ones that explode won’t catch the tree on fire.”

“Good.” She leans up, hooks her finger through his bowtie and pulls him down for a kiss. “Wouldn’t do to have my parents believe that we can’t throw a proper Christmas.”

“We are having it in a prison cell,” he points out, leaning in for another kiss. She dodges, with an impish smirk.

“It won’t look like a prison cell when _we’re_ finished with it, sweetie.” She tosses him a roll of shining silver silk, and points to the ceiling.

“We could have just taken them somewhere nice,” he mumbles grumpily, but he pulls his sonic from the pocket of his jacket and gets to work.

* * *

“We ought to nip down to the guards’ break room and steal some cookies. For Santa, of course,” she says, as their energy begins to flag.

“Will we have to run away once they spot us?” he asks, brushing lint off of his tweed jacket with an expression of irritation. She leans over to brush it off for him. “I don’t need your help, stop that, and anyway Nick detested sweets, they make him ill, River _really_ I can brush lint off my own jacket!”

“I’m sure you can, sweetie,” she says with a smile, but she takes a hold of the lapels of his jacket and straightens it anyway. “No running, I promise. I spiked their eggnog, they ought to be out for at least two days.”

“Is that _safe?”_ he asks, sounding and looking a little appalled. She giggles a little.

“Of course, my love, prisons become rather unpleasant if you start killing off their guards. It slows down their systems so they’ll wake up with a bit of a headache and a sense of lost time. Won’t do them a bit of harm, unless you count their egos. Shall we, then?”

She slips her hand into his own and tugs him out of the cell behind her, while he makes protesting noises about her wilfully causing the guards to miss Christmas.

“Fine,” she huffs, finally. “I’ll see what I can do with some hallucinogens about getting them out of here long enough for us to have a proper Christmas lunch tomorrow.”

He lets him lead her to the guard room as a slightly ridiculous grin creeps up his face, and, well, if half the cookies have been ruined by a puddle of melting ice cream, the other half are perfectly sound.

“Grab that whipped cream too, we’ll need that later,” she says, as they prepare to leave.

“What do we need--” he catches her wink, and with an embarrassed grin and a mild blush, he stops to grab a can of whipped cream. He pauses for a moment, and then grabs another for good measure, and follows her back to her cell.

* * *

Later, they lay curled together on her bed. They’ll relocate it in the morning, making room for plush armchairs and perhaps a sofa, but for now neither of them wants to move. The tree is as traditional as River could gleefully conceive: popcorn strings and tinsel and real candles topped with fireless flames. A concession has been made for the star; it is delicate, made of spun glass that glows brightly on its own. Its light settled through the room and reflects off the silver cloth lining the walls, casting odd shadows on their contented faces.

“Most dreadful holiday humans ever dreamt up,” he mumbles, tiredly.

“Shut up, I know it’s your favorite,” she replies, reaching up to brush a hand along his cheek. He leans into her touch, and then farther, curling around her. His breath brushes her neck, soft and warm.

“You smell like Christmas,” he breathes, nuzzling the spot where her neck meets her hair. “I got you something.”

“Did you?” she drawls, leaning back into his embrace.

“Be right back!” he says, and without warning he pulls away and stumble-falls out of her bed, before dashing into the TARDIS. She rolls over and settles into the warm place he’s left in the blankets, and prepares to wait.

Nearly half an hour passes, and she’s nearly fallen asleep by the time he returns.

“Sorry, _sorry,_ I _know_ I put it right by the blue regulators but it wasn’t there when I went to look and I couldn’t find it only then I remembered that I moved it and--”

She smiles and holds out her hands, and very gently, he wraps her fingers around a tiny box wrapped in shimmering golden paper.

“Happy Christmas,” he says, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. For a moment she only looks at him, surprised, and then she frantically tears open the paper to reveal a simple velvet-covered box.

“They’re very strict about jewelry in here,” she mumbles, not quite able to meet his eyes.

“Open it,” he says, his voice unusually intense.

She fumbles a little as she pries the box open--it’s an older box, the hinges a little stiff with age. She wonders where he got it, and how long ago, and what’s inside...

It pops open with a startlingly loud snap.

“You told me once that you missed the stars, here, where it’s always raining and you can never see the night sky,” he says, as she stares in silent wonder.

Inside the box is a microstar, captured inside a delicately woven time bubble so that it will last, bright and harmless, for the rest of eternity.

“You take me to see the stars every night,” she whispers as she caresses the bubble with a reverence she rarely offers anything.

“In case I ever miss a night,” he responds, equally reverent, as he tips the microstar into her hands and wraps them around it.

She looks up at him, stunned, with eyes full of wonder and starlight.

“Happy Christmas,” he says again, and suddenly he’s beaming. “I wrote asking for a hat, did you get me a hat? I know you’re not partial to fezzes but I was rather hoping for a Father Christmas cap or even another Stetson, since you shot my last one...”

“I shot your Stetson?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow in disbelief. She tucks the microstar into the folds of her journal and makes a note to sew a pouch for it later. Her own bit of starlight, to keep her company in the darkest of prisons. “I’ll have to remember that.” She hopes her smirk is as wicked as she intends it to be, but she rather thinks he’s made her soft for life.

A _star._

The outrage on his face as he realizes he’s just told her to destroy his own hat is priceless, and she pulls him to her to kiss his protests away. He smiles into their kiss and wraps her in his arms, and the world fades around them.

Outside, the frigid wind howls against the single glowing window of Stormcage, and the icicles lengthen again, locking their twisting silhouettes behind frozen glass.


End file.
